Let’s pile into the car and go to a movie at the local Drive-In!

Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review. As you can see by the title and my clever little opening salvo for the review, I’m looking at 1976’s Drive-In directed by Rod Amateau. If you look at the poster for Drive-In, and then look at the poster for George Lucas’ 1973 charmer American Graffiti… I think it’s clear that Columbia Pictures was leaning heavily on the coming-of-age style and depictions of the characters used by American Graffiti to sell Drive-In.

It’s obvious others picked up on it as it often was pointed out in reviews at the time. However, what’s interesting that some critics had some positive things to say about a movie that was very easy to call exploitation and trying to suckle at the teet of American Graffiti’s success. Critics pointed out that while not every performance by the young cast works, it’s got appeal. Others just flat-out called it likable for being easygoing. It’s often called funny by retaining a youthful, juvenile energy. So, yeah, this is a movie that, despite me just becoming aware of it over the last six months or so, was somewhat fondly reviewed during its day.

The one standout in the reception section of Wikipedia was good ol’ Gene Siskel. In a negative review, he said he wished the script for Drive-In had been tossed out in favor of the fake movie, Disaster ’76, to have been made instead. Oh, Gene…

Rod Amateau is the director of this film and his career in film and TV goes back to 1951. He mostly did TV shows. He directed episodes of The Patty Duke Show, Gilligan’s Island, and The Dukes of Hazzard. His most consistent job behind the camera was as director of 101 episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. You might think to yourself, “Jesus… 101 episodes is a lot!” You’d be right. What makes that number even more astonishing is that there were 148 episodes total across four seasons. I’m guessing it’s safe to say that directing over 68% of the episodes of a series means you had quite the hand in the overall presentation of that show.

When it came to films, really, there are only a few notable ones. I guess this one, based mostly on the mostly positive reviews, is one. However, he also directed a film called Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You. If that title rings a bell for any Tom Jones fans out there, you know that’s part of the lyrics of one of his songs. That song you’re thinking of is the theme song to What’s New, Pussycat? (whoa o-o-o-ohhhh). Yeah, Amateau directed the sequel to that film. Granted, he has a movie called Son of Hitler that, if I’m being totally honest, is one I would very much love to cover on this blog, but it’s his very last film he directed that WILL someday get on this blog. Yeah, he directed The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

For a few years in the 40s, Amateau was married to Coleen Gray who was best known for playing Molly in the 1947 version of Nightmare Alley.

The only recognizable face in the cast of this movie is Trey Wilson. Wilson is probably best known for being the manager of the Durham Bulls in the wonderful Bull Durham film as well as being Nathan Arizona in Raising Arizona. Wilson died very young from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1989 at the age of 40. Turned out, his burial a few days later was on his 41st birthday. A couple interesting notes about Wilson’s passing. In the end credits for the Academy Award-winning The Silence of the Lambs, the film is dedicated to him. The reason for that was that the film’s director, Jonathan Demme, directed him in Married to the Mob in 1988. Also, 1989’s Miss Firecracker, one of Wilson’s final films, was dedicated to him.

The other interesting fact is that 14 years later, in June 2003, Amateau also died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was aged 79. I don’t mean to make light of it, but it would seem like cerebral hemorrhage is not an overly common thing to die from. So I do find it interesting that the director of this movie and basically the most recognizable actor in the movie both died of the same cause.

The movie opens with a wonderful aerial shot of a field leading up to the drive-in theater. We get a classic weather report over the radio for the area before it launches into the jaunty theme song about goin’ to the movies. The song is called “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?” and it’s performed by The Statler Brothers. It’s a fun little song that sets the stage of how movies had changed by the 70s, but, let’s be honest here. While the song is fun and kind of silly, I feel like it’s just a musical version of most of the internet these days whenever Disney announces a new project or Star Wars movie or Marvel hero. In other words, this song is fun. Most of the people who bitch about the same stuff are a bunch of boomer jerks.

Before the Alamo Drive-In opens for that day, two ne’er do wells are scoping out the joint. They are watching the owner of the drive-in and studying how he always takes the money to the office at the end of each evening. They plan to jump him at the concession stand before he makes off for the office at the end of the night. If they were to stick him up at the box office, the cops who are consistently sitting out front will catch them right away.

Not only do we have the entirety of the movie centered at a drive-in and two-bit thieves who plan to stick the place up, but we also have an interstate trucker who tries getting away from the cops by speeding out ahead of them and then trying to hide from them only to be outsmarted by the cops and arrested for not pulling over as ordered. It’s like every mid to late-70s thing all wrapped up into one opening sequence.

We next meet a gang of dudes called The Widow Makers. Now, I don’t want to be that guy, but I’m not terribly scared of them. For one, look at the guy in the middle there with the big forehead and thick glasses. I feel like I could easily take him no sweat. Second, one of their guys has already been put into traction. So, they’re only at 80% full power. Thirdly, this gang doesn’t have motorcycles and leather jackets and tattoos. They have bright orange windbreaker rain jackets. They look more like guys who are working on the side of the road picking up trash than they do a tough gang. I bet I could get me and, like, three or four fourth grade girls and take their territory like it was nuthin’.

Anyway, these guys plan to get revenge on the gang that messed up their guy tonight at the drive-in. So add another thing that will be present at the movie tonight. We also have a pair of young lovers who will be at the theater too. The guy bought an engagement ring from one of the would-be robbers. His girlfriend is the sheriff’s daughter. When he meets up with his girlfriend at the roller rink, and pops that question, she doesn’t seem all that excited.

We also have a pair of brothers. The older brother gets some flirtatious looks from the crossing guard. The younger brother says he’s a loser for not scoring with her. The guy says she’s married, and old… like, 23 years old or something. The younger brother says the husband is out of town and she clearly doesn’t mind him being quite a bit younger.

There’s a little bit of a romantic triangle that might be forming as well. At the roller rink where most of the characters have congregated before going to tonight’s movie, we meet the lovely Glowie Hudson. She’s mostly the main squeeze of Enoch, the guy who runs the Widow Makers. However, she kind of thinks that Orville Hennigson, the redheaded older brother of the two above, is kind of cute. Orville’s little bro thinks that he needs to get in on that, but Orville doesn’t think he’s in her league.

Now… I have a LOT of questions here. Lisa Lemole plays Glowie. Okay, if you look up Lisa Lemole, you will find that she is now Lisa Oz. In 1985, she married Dr. Mehmet Oz. Yeah… That motherfucker. Anyway, according to all her biographical information, she was born in 1963. July 1963 to be exact. Yet… Drive-In was released in May 1976. That means she was 12 years old when this movie was released – and likely the same age when it was made. She’s playing the lusted-after girl between the leader of a teenage gang and another teen who can drive.

Okay, I’m not a creep. I mean… yeah I’m a creep, but not THAT kind of creep. There is no possible way Lisa Lemole was only 12 years old when making this movie. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she was somewhere between 15 and 18 when making this movie, but 12? No way. I think Lisa Oz is older than she says she is. If she really WAS 12 when making this movie, that’s kind of icky, isn’t it? She’s dressed as a sexually active girl and is cast to play a girl that two guys want to be sexually active with. I know this is the 70s and it was a whole different back then, but this feels… wrong? I don’t know what’s wronger though – is it what Lisa Lemole’s real age is or that she really was a 12 year old playing an older girl being lusted after? Maybe it’s possible what I said that she’s not really born in the summer of 1963, but I dunno. I don’t know if I should continue to question this shit. I feel icky.

Okay… Anyway, back to the movie. Glowie tells Enoch to get fucked. She’s tired of being chopped liver in his life. She tells her friends that she’s going to look for somebody new. She wants someone sincere.

I’ll say that, for the most part, these first 25 minutes or so aren’t too heavy on plot. It’s mostly just introducing characters and situations with the characters. That said, there’s something pretty pleasant about this movie. While it started out seeming to be something more about the dopey robbers scheming to knock over the drive-in, then it seemed to shift to the steady couple of Bill and Mary Louise, but now it’s seemingly becoming the Orville and Glowie show with Orville’s little brother Little Bit thrown in for good measure.

There’s a nice little feel to this movie. It’s a small town with a lot of different characters. Granted, there’s a summery feel to the movie. I think it’s either spring or fall because school’s in and there’s talk of a cool evening. Still, there’s a lazy weekend/summertime feel to the happenings. In a vacuum, none of these things individually would necessarily guarantee a good movie or a good feeling while watching this movie. That could only be compounded by what I said about these early scenes not really producing a great deal of plot.

All that said… This has enough of the right elements in the right amounts to be really entertaining. This reminds me of the types of things I would have loved to watch when I was a teen. In fact, I wish I had seen this movie when I was 12 or 13 and having sleepovers with friends. Hell, even if I saw it for the first time when I was in high school, I’d be totally into this movie. There’s just a pleasantness that makes you think of those more innocent days of youth. To be honest, when I would have been the perfect age for this movie, it would have been the early 90s and it wouldn’t have been all that different than the era of this movie.

Glowie gets a ride home from the roller rink with Orville and Little Bit. She tries her hardest to seduce Orville by using the information she got from her friends who’ve known Orville since junior high. She tells him to meet her at the drive-in tonight and to show her sincerity that she likes him, she gives him a big ol’ wet kiss goodbye. After dropping her off and riding high off getting kissed by the girl everyone in town likes, he doesn’t realize he’s about to run into the open driver’s side door of the Widow Makers’ van. He takes the door off and is chased by Enoch’s gang until Orville is able to slip away from them.

That night, Disaster ’76 debuts at the drive-in. Pretty much the whole town is there. The movie starts with a guy on a plane who plants a bomb as revenge for firing him. When the bomb goes off, it blows the pilots out of the plane and forces a stewardess and a boat captain to try to bring the plane in for a landing. It’s like a serious version of Airplane! When they try to land the plane, they smash the plane into a building which turns the building into a “towering inferno”. Each time they show more of the movie for the rest of our actual movie, some other disaster happens. There are fires and floods and earthquakes and just about everything that could happen happens.

It’s not long before Enoch tries to call Glowie from the drive-in, but learns she’s there with her girlfriends. Speaking of her girlfriends, one of them sees Widow Makers looking for their rivals to throw down with. If they’re there, Enoch’s gotta be there. Enoch decides to send some of his guys out after Orville to get him back for messing up their van, but he’s gone to meet with Glowie. When they eventually get back to Orville’s car during the rain delay in the movie, Enoch’s goons spot Glowie with him. They try to figure out how to break that news to Enoch.

But… Things aren’t going quite the way that Glowie expects either. She moves a little faster than Orville would like to. She wants to touch his hand but he pulls it away not expecting the move from her. When it stops raining, he seems more interested in that and the movie eventually starting back up than the overly nice and seductive things Glowie is saying to him. She then asks him flat out if he’s gay. She’s not prejudiced if he is, but she wants to know now if she’s wastin’ her time. Orville says he’s gotta go along at his own speed and she’s… well, she’s bossy. He says that she would tell the devil how to run Hell.

Glowie storms off after telling Orville that he knows about as much about lovin’ as an Athiest does Sunday mornings. That’s one great line from Glowie in a one-two punch of awesome retorts in this portion of the movie. As she walks back to find her girlfriends, she doesn’t realize they’ve taken off. Another guy says he’ll gladly take her home. She stops, smiles sweetly and pleasantly tells him she’d rather have a “non-specific infection”.

Glowie’s spittin’ fire at the halfway point of this movie!

Unfortunately, Glowie runs right into the Widow Makers. She asks him what he’s planning to do to her and he says he’s going to kick her ass until she looks like the leftovers from Jaws. She smashes him with the back door of the van and his goons take off after her.

They eventually catch up to her and bring her back to Enoch. He slaps her around to find out who she really is here with. Eventually, she tells him that she came here with Orville. She says that he’s got more sense than to be a part of some dumb gang. The goons go off to try to mess with Orville by sticking a lit rag under the gas cap.

Elsewhere, Bill and Mary Louise are still discussing marriage. Mary Louise says she wants to be somebody. He says that she will. She’ll be Mrs. Bill Hill. However, she wants to go to college and have a career and that flat-out flabbergasts him. He says he wants to go to the concession stand to get them something to drink and they’ll talk some more. When he gets there, he finds someone who knew him from when he was still in high school – the super cute Omalee Ledbetter.

Now, we’ve not talked too much about the robbers or Orville’s brother Little Bit for a while. The two robbers keep going over what they should do. It seems like each time they talk about their plan, it is slightly different than it was the last time. Gifford, the brains of the operation (and the one played by Trey Wilson), goes to the scout the concession stand as well as pick up something to eat. On the way back, he finds Little Bit peeking into his car. Little Bit has been going car to car trying to find people making out so he can watch them fumbling around in back seats and such. Understand that this is the importance of sex education, people. Anyway, Gifford grabs him and forces him into the car. They ponder what they should do with this kid who may be able to figure out what their plan is tonight.

Elsewhere, the Widow Makers try to get to Orville again. Now, each time the goons tried to get to Orville, something stopped them. The first time, he was looking for Glowie. The second time, the cops came by when they wanted to blow up his gas tank. This time, intermission hits and the lights come on as they try to break into his car, light his gas tank, and cut open the convertible top.

Arriving late to the drive-in are the Gear Grinders. They are the rival gang the Widow Makers originally planned to rumble with tonight. They pretend their van won’t start so they have to move the van to let other cars in and they take off without paying. One of the Widow Makers tips Enoch off about their arrival. In the van, Enoch finally kind of accepts that Glowie is done with him. She grabs his switchblade before taking off and when he wants it back she gives it to him… by sticking it in the waterbed in the back of the van, flooding it.

I admit, that got a good laugh from me. Enoch kept bringing up his waterbed and he’s always lounging on it in the back seat. That was a good conclusion to that whole thing in this movie up to this point by having her destroy it. The amount of water that comes out of the waterbed is ridiculous too.

Orville finds Glowie. He sees that she’s been slapped around. He wonders if she was only coming on to him to make Enoch jealous, but she swears that she really is a one-man woman and everything she said to him was sincere. He says it’s time for him to step up and take on Enoch himself.

We’re basically at the shit or get off the pot stage of all the plots. Gifford and Will are going to rob the concession stand. The Widow Makers are ready to fight the Gear Grinders. These two intertwine when the robbery goes down but Bill figures out who the masked robbers are by their voices. When everything is at a standoff, Little Bit shuts off the lights which also shuts off the lights outside the concession stand where the two gangs around about to rumble. Gifford and Will take off running, through the two gangs. This breaks up the fight and the police come flying in to figure out all the commotion. In the big chase, an old lady who came here with her son to watch the movie and got stoned with him tells her son to go be a hero after hearing the gunfire. They run into the back of the cop car which allows the two crooks to get away and decide to live a different life. With the cops now in the mix, the two gangs decide to postpone their rumble for another time.

After the encounter at the concession stand with both the well-endowed Omalee and the robbery attempt, Bill is now less sure about getting married than Mary Louise. She knows that while she goes off to school, they will both change and be different people. He considers the different holes he’s yet to fish in and the trees they’ve not yet climbed. So… I guess they’re at the end of the line for their relationship?

There is still one last thing to clear up… Orville and Enoch. Turns out, Orville is no weakling. He takes a punch and can get out of being in holds and disarm Enoch whenever he has a knife in his face. As the two fight, Orville takes Enoch’s knife and snaps the blade off with his bare fuckin’ hands. Turns out this freckly ginger kid is a hell of a man. With Enoch defeated, the rest of the Widow Makers turn their back and leave him at the drive-in alone.

Disaster ’76 ends and everyone files out of the drive-in. Waiting at the exit is Little Bit. Orville and Glowie pick him up and fill him in on Orville whippin’ Enoch’s ass. Once again, Glowie says she’s here with Orville on her choice and it’s because she really does like him. The two of them decide to give their relationship one hell of a try. The new couple rides off happy and our real movie comes to a close.

Drive-In is a really sweet little movie. Sure, there’s a hell of a lot that goes on in this movie, and there are a ton of characters, but the characters are fun and there aren’t really any I’d like to take out of the movie. It’s a pretty good balance with everything that is going on with all these characters. I didn’t even have to mention the carload of priests that cheat the system by having three of them hiding in the trunk when they paid to get in or the black doctor who is new in town and terribly nervous about being in a small Texas town where he clearly stands out. I barely even mentioned the mom and son who got stoned off their asses throughout the whole night. But because I barely mentioned them, that doesn’t mean I want them removed from the movie. They’re just fun little characters to see from time to time in the grand scheme of the movie’s plot.

Really, this movie belongs to a handful of the characters and the actors that play them. Clearly, Trey Wilson and Gordon Hurst playing the robbers, Gifford and Will, are the elder statesmen of the main cast. While they were both still kind of new to film, both would go on to be in a ton of stuff. Hurst’s first film was The Last Picture Show and then he appeared in The Sugarland Express, so he had a little experience already. I was really surprised by the performances of the main younger cast, specifically Lisa Lemole, Glenn Morshower (Orville), and Billy Milliken (Enoch). They were all really pretty good and believable as real kids with varying degrees of teenage angst and issues. Morshower has over 230 credits to his name, so he continued on working quite a bit. In fact, he appeared in 25 episodes of the TV Series The Resident and a few episodes of the big hit Ozark. We already talked about Lemole and if she really was only twelve when making this movie, that’s an amazing job of playing older. Milliken only appeared in one other movie as an actor, but he’s good as the menacing, yet kind of a loser, Enoch. He made me believe that he would really do some awful things to Glowie.

There’s a lot to really like about Drive-In. It’s busy and frantic, but there’s a ton of charm to it. I wish I had seen this movie when I was 13, but at 47, I still quite enjoyed it. In a lot of ways, I found myself kind of yearning for a much less stressful and responsibility-filled life of my teenage years. There was fun to be had cruising about with friends and flirting with girls and such. At my current age, I still love trekking out to the drive-ins that still exist in Central Indiana. There’s joy in watching a movie outside on a big screen and having some greasy drive-in concession stand food.

More importantly, there’s joy in thinking back to those earlier days of your life when you were becoming the person you are today.

Well, that does it for this week’s B-Movie Enema. Next week, we go from the drive-in to the high seas. I’m going to review a movie that has been long overdue on the blog. Join me next time as we board 1980’s Death Ship. Until then, remember the Alamo and the drive-in never dies…